Saturday, December 31, 2016

I love to make end-of-the-year lists of my favorite books and music. Back when I was a high school teacher, I usually had time in late December to compile them and write up a short synopsis. Now that I'm working on my PhD, however, time is limited. I'm able to make the lists, but I don't quite have the time to provide any commentary. With that in mind, I bring you these old tweets to represent the 2016 version of my end-of-the-year book and music lists.

Although there were plenty of other very good books that I read in 2016, at the time of that tweet I felt comfortable with those six standing as my favorites. In the time since December 11, however, I've read another book that I would add to the list: Andrea Turpin's A New Moral Vision: Gender, Religion, and the Changing Purposes of American Higher Education, 1837-1917 (Cornell University Press). Perhaps I'm a bit biased -- Turpin is one of my professors at Baylor, and she will be serving on my dissertation committee -- but I think that the book deserves to get a good bit of scholarly buzz among historians in 2017 (it always takes academics a year or two to get caught up on new books, so maybe 2018 is the year of the buzz).

As of right now I think these are my 12 fav albums this year. Chance the Rapper is kind of like Alabama, in his own league at the top. pic.twitter.com/BE6zkX5p5e

This list still holds up. Margo Price's album Midwest Farmer's Daughter is the only addition I would make.

Along with recapping music and book consumption, for the past couple years I've taken some time to summarize my writing output at the end of each year. Here's the list of my written work in 2016. I expect/hope that 2017 will have far fewer entries, but a far more important one: a completed (or nearly completed) dissertation.